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Willow Creek, headed by Bill Hybels, is one of the largest churches in America. One of its babies is the Global Leadership Summit (GLS) which has been running for several years. Many churches have jumped on this bandwagon of leadership and growing leadership and running leadership seminars and other leadership BLAH BLAH BLAH. Oh, sorry, I drifted off their for a second or two. Must be all this leadership talk!

The modern church is making so much of leadership and leadership principles that in my opinion, it is forgetting its primary mandate from none other than Jesus Christ Himself. In Mt 28:18-20 it is written:

“18 And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make leaders in your churches from all nations, certifying them as leaders in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all leadership principles that I have commanded you. And behold, I will put great leaders among you always, to the end of the age.'”

That is how it reads in the Leadership Principles Study Bible, available at all poor Christian bookstores near you!

But, this passage actually says:

“18 And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'”

When the church becomes this concerned with making leaders, then it has lost the plot. The primary mandate for the church is to make disciples, and those disciples must make disciples, recursively.

Enough of this “leadership” talk!

T.D. Jakes

An alarming issue for me is the inclusion of T.D. Jakes. And this is where the theological discernment comes in! T.D. Jakes is a non-repentant, non-trinitarian. That means he does not believe in the Trinity of the Scriptures, hence putting himself outside of the fold of historic, Biblical Christianity. As a result, historically and Biblically, he would be known as a heretic! To find out more on what Jakes really believes you can go here, here and here. You can also read my blog series (first posted at Sovereign Truth) on the heresies of the Word-of-Faith preachers that have invaded the church so deeply.

The problem with all of these false teachers invading the church, is that the church has largely lost its ability to know and express a Biblical theological standpoint! The problem is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not really that important any more!

When asked what is important, these people come up with all kinds of answers that do not really have any link back to the gospel! Things like being relevant, leadership and all kinds of worldly fads. I listened to a sermon by David Wells a while ago in which he said that when the church starts following a fad, that fad is no longer cool!

The church has essentially lost its foundation when it started adding all kinds of other ideas to the gospel and eventually lost much of the gospel. It is for this reason that preachers such as T.D. Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer and others have so easily invaded churches with their books and videos. The “essentials of the gospel” have become non-essential!

We simply cannot allow these wolves in sheep’s clothing to further bring doctrines of death to our churches! Just because someone claims the name of Christ, does not mean that Christ has claimed that person. Christianity is a propositional faith. It makes some truth claims, and some of those truth claims are clearly doctrinal, and without them, your faith is no longer the Christian faith. It is on this basis that we can say that Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are not Christian. It is, based on these accepted essential doctrines, that we can say that the WOF preachers and men like T.D. Jakes stand outside of the true Christian fold.

The question is, however, will pastors stand on the truth of the gospel, or on expediency, driven by the urge to be relevant in an age of intolerance.

I know that the images above are usually used for another story, but when someone at work emailed them to me, it made me think of the state of the preaching of the gospel in the modern church.

It is amazing how the gospel has been emasculated from the truth of God’s wrath on sinners and the resultant death of Christ as a propitiation towards God for sinners to “God has a wonderful plan for your life!” or “You are not as bad as those fundamentalists say you are!” or “It doesn’t matter how you live or what you believe, as long as you are sincere!”

When the gospel is truncated here and there to make it easier for people to accept it as in the picture above, the day will come that those that believed they are in Christ will come to the end of their days and discover that the gospel they believed literally falls short of the true gospel of God in Christ. It is only the full gospel that brings salvation. Any other gospel brings damnation!

The gospel in essence is an offence to the world! It goes against everything that the world believes. By making the gospel palatable to the world with the “good” notion of getting them to believe, they will not be saved, but be condemned by the very “palatable” gospel to a life without God!

“[E]ven if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

It is for this reason that we have to remain vigilant against all kinds of false teaching and heresy. We cannot allow false teachers to create a false confidence in people to believe that they are indeed saved. The whole gospel must be preached!

What we are saved by is what we are saved to! If I am “saved” by a false gospel, then I am damned to live by that false gospel. But, if I am saved by the true gospel, it will save me to serve the living God in Christ.